News From Nowhere: Freedom Village
Mobile Agora
Mobile Agora is a constantly moving and changing space of relationships and alliances that begins by highlighting the social role and function of art. Here, experts in various fields, from artists to designers, architects and scientists, gather and address the meaning of art, reflect on society as a whole in fields including art, sociology, science, politics and culture, and broaden the scope of the exhibition. Through the close relationships formed at Mobile Agora, we explore the fundamental causes of the crises we face today and attempt to propose new values and alternative futures.
Freedom Village 2021
Freedom Village 2017
FREEDOM VILLAGE (2017) is a video work inspired and created after research, consideration and imagination on the village. While the settlement has existed physically on the Korean Peninsula since the armistice agreement ended Korean War hostilities, in institutional terms the site is non-existent thus imbuing the place with an untouchable mirage-like quality. This work features characters who exist in various spacetime intersecting in complex forms impossible to identify as past, present or future. Through this work, the artists expose the fictions and errors in a history of repeated fabrications and cover ups.
Freedom Village Archive
“An archive of the history of human greed, recurring oblivion, cover-ups and dissemblance”
Freedom Village contains the contradictions of political ideology and systems and the errors of humanity. It is home to things that cannot be explained within the scope of human-made symbols and language. In this archive, records of Freedom Village, a place we know exists but which we cannot reach, are reprocessed through the imaginations and reinterpretations of the artists. The photographs, videos and texts reinterpreting the history and past events of the village as held in the National Archive of Korea through the artists’ imaginations hover between truth and fiction, adding yet more fabricated elements to scarcelybelievable facts and beings. Finally, these fictional records move beyond Freedom Village, throwing into clear relief the global contradictions that riddle human history and proposing calm awareness and introspection regarding our current condition.
Digital Prints
Freedom Village_Sign of Freedom Village, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Freedom Village_Lean on the Tree, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Freedom Village_Foot Volleyball 2, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Freedom Village_Village Hall, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Freedom Village_Warning of Influenza, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Freedom Village_On the Back Stage, 2017~2021, Digital print, 120x140cm.
Landscape
This large landscape work, newly painted for this exhibition, gives the sensation of bringing the video narrative into the realm of reality by importing part of a scene from NEWS FROM NOWHERE: FREEDOM VILLAGE (2021). By addressing the same theme as the film but rendering it through the completely different medium of a painting, the work lets viewers conjure new experiences and emotions. As well as metaphorically expressing Freedom Village, a place that exists yet cannot be reached, the work indicates the important role of art in rendering all impossibilities possible based on imagination, by reproducing the scene in the gallery of an art museum.